Viewing profile — water-data-dude

Sampling bias. Most of those millions of people are white, cis, straight folks who present as the gender they were assigned at birth. The odds of something horrible happening are m…

An excellent illustration of Chesterton's Fence

For most of my life it's felt like we've been moving away from this scenario, but lately it's felt like we're sliding back towards it

TMDA (too many damn acronyms)?

For anyone interested in the history of water in the American West (what's different about the west, and how did we get here?), I recommend the extremely interesting and readable b…

I was never rabid about it, but I thought prediction markets were a cool idea for a while. I didn't anticipate all of the crazy second order effects.

It would be great if it worked that way, with the people living nearby getting concrete benefits from the new data center. Instead, they typically just see an increase in their uti…

The only time the Sunshine Protection Act has passed the senate was when gosh danged Tom Cotton wasn't there[0]. I swear, he's in the pocket of Big Time[1]. [0] https://www.mediait…

You can read an explanation of the status codes on the icann website. The explanation for clientRenewProhibited was interesting: "This status code tells your domain's registry to r…

In the US it's been turned into a culture war thing, because ignoring the problem benefits some already wealthy people who think they'll either be insulated by their wealth or they…

India and Pakistan are both reliant on the Indus River for their agriculture. The Indus has its source in glaciers in the Himalayas. As those glaciers disappear, the Indus will del…

I started listening to an audiobook of Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust with the best of intentions. It's high quality literature, and it unquestionably has artistic and…

"I haven't encountered a rare edge case, therefor the rare edge case must not exist"

I'm interested to see if this is the whole story[0], but on the surface it sure is infuriating. [0] this article and a bsky post by the author of the article are the only sources I…

I'm a big fan of WaterFox! I switched when Firefox decided to add a ton of AI crap without providing a "turn this crap off" button (you could force it, but I don't want to fight my…

I know that if I lived somewhere urban it would feel welcoming. I know there's a large LGBT community there already. I know that there's gay clubs and stuff like Texas Furry Fiesta…

As a gay dude I will never take a job in Texas. Companies may enjoy the lax regulatory environment and favorable tax laws, but there are many bright people who - for one of a NUMBE…

I'm talking about the wealthy building private end of the world bunkers

America can do anything the UK can do, but bigger and better!

If things ever get bad enough that the wealthy need underground nuclear bunkers, the underground nuclear bunkers aren't going to be enough to protect them. The ordinary people who …

Humanity's working on it, lol

Don't you think it might be harder to replace the people who work for free, as opposed to replacing paid employees? The unpaid labor is...unpaid.

Agreed. For a long time Jack Welch was lauded as "The Greatest CEO in History" for burning GE to the ground in a way that made a lot of money (while destroying a company that took …

Maybe this is what happens when you fill roles based on loyalty to one person rather than competence

The problem is that a private company holds onto the data forever. Then the government can ask the private company for that data without a warrant. With the number of Flock cameras…